God and the big and little pictures

The Church usually promotes living out our faith through service as a main aspect of Christianity, and this is perhaps as it should be. But there is also a long tradition of contemplation in the Church. The big questions have been contemplated over many centuries, by such giants of the Church as Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas, who, Paul Davies says, were “not pious simpletons”. They weren’t content to say “God made it” and leave it at that, but a hunger for knowing God manifested itself in a hunger for understanding God’s creation. Einstein, that looming twentieth-century figure with the cartoon hair, once observed that marvelling at the mysterious is at the heart of religion. And while religion generally tackles the ‘why’ questions, and science the ‘how’, modern scientific theories, particularly cosmology and quantum physics — the incredibly big and the incredibly small pictures — dovetail into metaphysics.

Paul Davies, while he doesn’t call himself a Christian, in his writings has consistently offered support to the camp opposed to the atheist fundamentalism (disguised as science) of Richard Dawkins and company. Davies thinks it is a part of the scientific agenda to take seriously the fact that the universe seems, as the subtitle of his new book puts it, “just right for life”. The Goldilocks Enigma explores recent theories in cosmology and quantum physics, and therefore offers an update on the theories explored in his bestselling The Mind of God. In this new book, he takes us down the rabbit hole into the strange new world of string theory, amongst others, where there are many more dimensions than the four we are familiar with, and where subatomic particles are made of vibrating strings that are, in fact, more like lattices of dimensions rolled up like pipes.

This mind-boggling realm nonetheless seems fine-tuned, suggesting design. In the past Davies has attributed this to a god-like something; here he seems more cautious, in particular pointing out that if God is outside of time, the notion of God as designer becomes problematic. Einstein showed that time, like the other three dimensions, is contained within the universe, inadvertently proving Augustine’s conclusion that God made time and therefore stood outside it. Design, which is a time-bound process, seems inadequate to explain what God does. In fact, any notions of cause and effect become inadequate as explanations.

However we think of design, Einstein also asked why it is we can even understand the universe, why science as a discipline works. This, says Davies, is a question atheist scientists are afraid to ask because it invokes something called the anthropic principle, which in turn invokes teleology (the idea that the universe has a purpose). Copernicus and later scientific theory, in Annie Dillard’s vivid imagery, lifted the roof and blew out the walls of our comfy little house of understanding, by showing that we human beings are not, physically anyway, in the centre of our universe. But more recent theory, quantum physics in particular, places importance on the role of the observer, to the point where there would seem to be no universe without us. (Michael Frayn explores these ideas further in his latest book).

Some theorists explain the fact that we seem central to this universe with many outlandish theories, many contravening the principle of Occam’s Razor (the simplest explanation is usually best), including mother universes giving birth to baby universes, indefinite expansion and contraction, and the idea that all universes that logically can exist must exist. This becomes a murky area, as it is possible our notions of logic don’t apply beyond this universe, just as the laws of physics and mathematics may be particular to our universe (and just as some philosophers of mind believe explaining consciousness may be impossible while we are in it). The ultimate origin of the universe might simply be beyond scientific endeavour (though of course within the realm of theology).

The ultimate question may be simply “why is there something rather than nothing?” — a question Owen Gingerich, who describes himself as “a professional scientist and a historian of science, but also an amateur theologian”, is not afraid to ask. In his book, he makes similar observations to Davies, albeit in a much more concise fashion. He, like Davies, sees design, but, as he explains, in more subtle ways than Intelligent Design. In particular, he tackles the principle of mediocrity, often associated with Copernicus’ revolutionary view of the solar system — the view, opposed to the anthropic principle, that Earth is nothing special in such a vast universe. Opposition to the anthropic principle often betrays ideological rather than scientific views, as atheist scientists are often desperate to keep God out of the picture.

Like fellow scientist and theologian John Polkinghorne, Gingerich shows that scientific theory is not a replacement for theology. But then neither is theology a replacement for scientific theory. He quotes Kepler, who helped popularise Copernican theory and wrote that both the gardener and the astronomer praise God in their own ways, and the gardener should not dismiss a science he doesn’t understand as godless. Gingerich writes, “Kepler’s life and works provide central evidence that an individual can be both a creative scientist and a believer in divine design in the universe”. Of his own propensity to see God’s purposes expressed in both Scripture and Nature Gingerich says, “I think my belief makes me no less a scientist”.

Davies’ book is full of detail, and a thorough guide to the latest scientific developments; but he is capable of zooming out also, to make sense of all this quantum weirdness. Gingerich’s book takes up where Davies leaves off, and in a slim volume gives us a snapshot of how one scientist thinks God fits into, or around, this strange new world.

Nick Mattiske